For some dark reason, which it is difficult indeed
to fathom, belief in patriotism in our day is held
to mean principally a belief in every other nation
abandoning its patriotic feelings. In the case
of no other passion does this weird contradiction
exist. Men whose lives are mainly based upon friendship
sympathise with the friendships of others. The
interest of engaged couples in each other is a proverb,
and like many other proverbs sometimes a nuisance.
In patriotism alone it is considered correct just
now to assume that the sentiment does not exist in
other people. It was not so with the great Liberals
of Mrs. Browning’s time. The Brownings had,
so to speak, a disembodied talent for patriotism.
They loved England and they loved Italy; yet they
were the very reverse of cosmopolitans. They loved
the two countries as countries, not as arbitrary divisions
of the globe. They had hold of the root and essence
of patriotism. They knew how certain flowers
and birds and rivers pass into the mills of the brain
and come out as wars and discoveries, and how some
triumphant adventure or some staggering crime wrought
in a remote continent may bear about it the colour
of an Italian city or the soul of a silent village
of Surrey.